Rwandan Officials trained on Land use Decision support System (LUDSS) tool

The importance attached to building capacities of staff from different agencies in use of geospatial tools & earth observations was witnessed during the Advanced GIS and Remote Sensing workshop in Rwanda.

16 participants from eight organizations in Rwanda namely: Rwanda Housing Authority (RHA), Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA), Rwanda Land Use and Management Authority (RLMUA), Ministry of Lands and Forestry (MINILAF), Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugees (MIDIMAR), Ministry of Local Government (MINALOC), Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB), Rwanda Water and Forestry Authority (RWFA), Rwanda Land Use and Management Authority (RLMUA), and Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) were in attendance.

After the completion of this training, the participants will be able to understand the concepts of advanced GIS and remote sensing. In addition, the participants will be able to use the Land use Decision support System (LUDSS) tool after the five day workshop in Kigali.

Land use and land cover change have become a central component in current strategies for managing natural resources and monitoring environmental changes. The advancement in the concept of vegetation mapping has greatly increased research on land use land cover change thus providing an accurate evaluation of the spread and health of the world’s forest, grassland, and agricultural resources have become an important priority. Viewing the Earth from space is now crucial to the understanding of the influence of man’s activities on his natural resource base over time.

RCMRD through the SERVIR-E&SA conducted a needs assessment in 2016 to understand the climate related issues that the country was facing. From the assessment done, part of the key issues highlighted include landslides, land use change monitoring, deforestation, appropriate resettlements and monitoring of urban growth.

Taking cognizance of the existing data, it was agreed that development of a Land use Decision support System (LUDSS) would be an optimal solution in addressing some of the identified issues. Follow-up consultations were held in 2017 with key stakeholders from 8 (eight) Ministries from Rwanda, to further refine the specific needs that shall be addressed by the LUDSS.

The consultations’ way forward was that the tools shall use available data to identify priority areas for rehabilitation and this shall be based on: the Landslide susceptibility, land use change and the degraded lands.

The Director General, RLMUA Chief Registrar of Land Titles of Esperance Mukamana opened the workshop on day one.

The participants were able to learn basics of GIS including an overview of GIS, build GIS geodatabases, manage spatial and non-spatial datasets in a geodatabase, data Integration (vector), work with qualitative and quantitative data, build geo-processing models, raster data Manipulation and work in with digital elevation models (DEM). Furthermore, the participants were introduced to remote sensing including basics of remote sensing, data preparation, work with image bands, principal Components Analysis (PCA), vegetation Indices (NDVI, NDWI, EVI, NDBI, BAI, and NBRT), change assessment and image classification.